My increased comfort may also stem from spending time in gym locker rooms, where there is every body type under the sun and I got used to getting undressed in front of strangers, or from finally challenging myself to do the things I feared-like going to the beach and allowing people to see my body. Now that I’m older, I just don’t care as much about what other people think about my body. Slowly, over time, my body insecurities have lessened. I even considered doing steroids, as I knew many other guys who had done so. My desire to maintain my new body was motivated by my (internalized) homophobia-I didn’t want to be that person I hated, that person at the bottom of the hierarchy. My obsession went from partying to working out.
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I had gay men figured out: I had finally learned how to “play the game.” I felt I deserved to act that way, after having suffered for so long alone and in silence. I took advantage of other guys, mostly by capitalizing on my knowledge and experience, having lived at both the top and the bottom of the hierarchy. In a community where attractiveness has a certain value, I was no longer invisible. I was finally getting the attention I had always longed for. I was still using drugs, but now I was hooking up with a variety of different guys. I was living in my new, “non-fat” body, and I was exploding with excitement. I lost weight and things started to shift for me. In my twenties, after I started partying, I became motivated to change my body and my life. In my teens, I had wrestled with thoughts of suicide. I was used to getting teased and being left out, but that doesn’t necessarily get easier as you get older. Partying became a way for me to numb my experience as the guy at the bottom of the hierarchy. Not at first-at first, I took drugs: MDMA (Ecstasy or molly), crystal meth and cocaine-party drugs-mostly on the weekend (which was Wednesday to Sunday on my calendar) and eventually every day. My face was pretty and my mannerisms were effeminate, leaving me at the bottom of the social order.
I had small shoulders, and big everything else. I felt bad about my body, which was soft, mostly fat, with little or no visible muscle. I saw others get attention while I was ignored or rejected. I crushed on guys who were “out of my league.” I watched my “more attractive” friends meet or date guys who ignored me. When I was a younger man entering the gay scene, I quickly discovered that where I ranked and where I wanted to rank were two different places. This form of homophobia is intimately tied to misogyny, a dislike of women. This means that the “ideal man” is represented in an image that replicates the standard construct of the straight man: athletic and muscular, but more importantly, not “feminine.” Typically, in gay culture, effeminate behaviour is a characteristic that ranks at the bottom of the attractiveness hierarchy. This idealized masculine body is not only unachievable for many of us-it is also anchored in heteropatriarchy.
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This ideal body is not just a physical type-it is also a manifestation of the abstract “masculinity.” Think: Abercrombie model, action movie superhero, pop star, athlete.
The young, lean, muscular, smooth, white, cisgender (non-trans) male body is over-represented in media and accepted as the most attractive. As gay men, we tend to measure ourselves, those we desire and those who desire us against certain ideals of attractiveness. Our experiences with other gay men depend on where we rank in the hierarchy. I believe that in the gay community there is an unspoken hierarchy of attractiveness. I am finally at a better place with my body, as a proud, out, gay man in my late thirties, but it has taken a lot of time, effort and experience to get here.
I have struggled with my body my entire life-mostly because I’ve been unhappy with it. Frank Colosimo Visions Journal, 2016, 12 (1), p.